


The Lede Up

by LovelyPoet



Category: His Girl Friday (1940)
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, Getting Together, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-18
Updated: 2020-12-18
Packaged: 2021-03-11 02:41:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,524
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28147749
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LovelyPoet/pseuds/LovelyPoet
Summary: Walter and Hildy making all the right/wrong turns
Relationships: Walter Burns/Hildy Johnson
Comments: 10
Kudos: 25
Collections: Yuletide 2020





	The Lede Up

**Author's Note:**

  * For [jedi_penguin](https://archiveofourown.org/users/jedi_penguin/gifts).



Like so many young ladies from the fine families of Connecticut, Miss Hildegarde Johnson, daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Ernest Johnson, Esq., was introduced to polite society at seventeen. She quickly discovered they had very little in common and began working on a plan to end the acquaintance. 

To say that she ran away from home shortly after that would be an over dramatic summary of the events. Strict factual accounting showed that her parents had taken it as well as she could have hoped when she finally told them she would be accepting her admission to Barnard not Wellesley. On a warm August day in ‘25, they treated her to a light breakfast at the Breakwater before delivering her and her trunks to the New Haven station. They hugged her and kissed her cheek and waved from the platform as her train pulled away. If she left them with the belief she'd be home for good in four years with a classics degree and an engagement to a good New England boy, it was only for the sake of their comfort and her own sanity.

In the eighty miles between New Haven and Grand Central, Hildy won $3.45 off a quartet of Fordham boys who thought too highly of their poker skills and turned down the marriage proposal of a Columbia law student who overestimated his charms in general. 

Two years of exemplary scholarship earned her transfer from Barnard to Columbia’s School of Journalism, where they taught her editing and ethics and how not to get her employer sued. Late nights talking to dancers and gamblers, busboys and gangsters and longer days combing committee meeting minutes showed her the story was always worth looking for. 

The rhythm of the city changed in ‘29, of course, but Hildy found the new beat easily enough. When she crossed the bridge into the wilds of New Jersey, she left behind a string of broken-hearted nice young men who’d once had promising futures in legitimate business and who swore they would make good again, give her a happy home. It sounded like a threat to her every time.

Instead, she held tight to her fancy sheepskin declaring her to have attained the highest moral and intellectual training and, more importantly, a folder full of clippings from the _Brooklyn Daily Eagle_ proving she could tell her adjectives from her elbow.

The first time she saw Walter Burns in the flesh, he was wearing a blue flannel suit and a maniacal grin. As he pushed his way past her in the crowded lobby of the Morning Post building, she had just enough time to think that the grin fit him better than the suit. Then the oak and frosted glass door of the elevator began sliding shut. She could hear her mother’s voice in her head telling her that if she'd had a tenth the sense that the good maker gave Eve, she would turn and walk out right then, come back to her parents’ loving arms. 

When the next elevator opened, she stepped on.

* * *

By six-years old, Wally knew how to wake up before the sun. Each morning, he joined his father and older brother in the cozy kitchen of the apartment while his mother slept on. The room filled with the mingled scents of fresh newsprint and coffee and, with his chubby fingers still clumsy from sleep, Wally would mimic their practiced movements, folding the broadsheets of the _Morning Post_ into compact rolls, his palms coming away smudged and dark. 

While other boys gobbled up the latest issue of _Boy’s Life_ or Thornton Burgess’ animal tales or, if they considered themselves daring, the adventures of Tom Swift or John Carter, Wally preferred to practice his reading with the lurid tales of murder, mayhem, catastrophe, and corruption that filled the Post daily. At fourteen, he’d moved on from folding papers at home to running freshly written copy from desk to desk in the City Room, swiping half smoked cigarettes from overflowing ashtrays and practicing his charms on secretaries and switchboard operators. 

One night in ‘22, while Jimmy Morton slept off a half bottle of bootleg under his desk, Wally sat down at the ace reporter’s typewriter and pounded out six paragraphs of brutal indictment of the governor, state’s attorney, and county commissioners across fair Jersey for their failure to halt an ongoing series of arsons lighting up warehouses from Newark to Trenton. His words were in the morning edition under Morton’s byline, and within three weeks, there were enough federal agents thick on the ground and charges for nearly everybody. 

Four months after that, the first Walter Burns byline appeared on a human interest feature about a three-legged dog that rescued a baby when the spring flood waters of the Second River swept him away from his loving mother’s arms. Never mind that the dog had all four legs and the nearly drowned baby was a six year old who got his galoshes a bit muddy while chasing a little green frog. 

It was all up for him from there because, unlike the soft college boys who kept showing up with their lofty ideals, Walter knew better than to ever let the facts of the matter get in the way of the truth of the story. By the time the roar of the twenties hit that deafening crash, Morton’s typewriter belonged to Walter full time, and so did his office.

The first time he actually noticed Hildy Johnson, she was standing in the middle of the City Room swearing vociferously at Smith, the much loathed assistant editor, for loaning her out to Society to cover the spectacle of the junior senator’s niece’s second wedding. The strangely delicate poise with which she held the letter opener pointed at the man’s heart did nothing to convince Walter she wasn’t capable of leaving him a bleeding mess on the floor. And in that moment, Walter knew he’d never be able to let her go.

“Johnson!” He bellowed across the room. “I’ve got a story for you, if you think you can hack it.”

* * *

**_Two Years Later_ **

The tip came in around half past nine on a tuesday morning. The day before, Mrs. Elizabeth Haggerty was found by her son peacefully tucked into her bed, bible and rosary clutched in her hands, and dead as a doornail. A life well lived and called home to her rest, the son tearfully told the housekeeper who told the coroner. But the youngest daughter, Lydia, still had Walter’s card in her purse from their story on a raid at her last place of employment the summer before, and she had another story to tell. 

“It was Daddy’s bible,” she said between grimacing sips of terrible coffee fortified by a hefty slug of whiskey. “The only thing I ever saw her use it for after he was gone was a door stop. She used to tell me she had more use for Herbert Hoover than she did for God, and she never had any use for a Republican. That’s why I came to you, you see. Not just because you were so good to me with that whole business back then, but because we were a Morning Post house. And I know that if there’s anyone Mama would have trusted to get to the bottom of this, it’s you Mr. Burns.” 

Hildy managed to smother her snort with a cough, and Walter for his part restrained his smug grin as he tutted and patted the daughter’s hand gently. 

“Rest assured, my dear,” he said. “The Morning Post is always at the ready to shine the light of truth on every dark shadow of evil in our city. That’s the true duty of a newspaperman, I always say. And when it’s our own valued readers who’ve been made a victim of, why then it’s doubly so. You departed mother’s memory will live on in the hearts and minds of Post readers across our fair city when I’ve had my say, and she’ll stand as a—”

Hildy cleared her throat and jabbed the pointed tip of her shoe into the meat of Walter’s calf under the table, earning a sidelong glare in return.

“You might want to do something about that cough, Hildy. Now, where was ah. Ah yes. Tell me, Miss Haggerty, you said your brother is a chemist?”

Before they even had the young Miss Haggerty safely in the custody of a bachelor uncle on her father’s side, Hildy had the housekeeper on the horn. The old gossip was all too eager to spill that the widow matriarch recently had a visit from her lawyer that ended with instructions for a freshly drawn will. One that excised the darling son Micheal from any inheritance. 

Then came a back room meeting and a third hand account filtered down through a Monmouth Park bookie who heard from his girlfriend, a cigarette girl at the Downtown Club, whose brother mopped office floors at Luxor Laboratories. Michael Haggerty had been spotted working late three nights ago in a lab he should never have been in. Walter managed to hold off his horrible crow of victory until they were back out on the street. 

"What did I tell you, Hildegarde. Natural causes my foot. It was murder clear as day," He had that wild, excited look again. It was as familiar to her now as her own front door.

"Yes, Walter. A brilliant insight," Hildy said, with a roll of her eyes and the flattest voice she could manage. "How did you ever land on that?"

"A reporter's intuition knows." He puffed himself up, "Oh, don't worry you'll get there yet. Why just last year you would have argued back at me about the legitimacy of my sources. And now here you are my faithful apprentice—"

"Careful, Walter, you're building up quite a head of steam." Hildy adjusted her hat, a lime green and black plaid number that had been a gift from Ruth on the switchboard at last year’s Christmas to-do. She'd hated it on sight but was growing more fond every time Walter squinted distastefully at it. “Keep on that track and you'll be halfway to Altoona by dinner." 

Altoona was not the destination he had in mind for their evening. 

Standing in a stinking muck of stale rainwater and rotting vegetables Hildy looked up. There, three floors above her, Walter braced himself on a narrow ledge. Just on the other side of the jutting column of a brick chimney was a partially open window. Walter had the brim of his hat clenched in his teeth nearly as tight as Hildy’s breath seemed to be in her chest. 

Hildy glanced at her watch, the details of its face were barely visible in the cast-off beam of the streetlight angling down the alley. Ten minutes to midnight on the dot. 

She whistled twice, and Walter moved. With a practiced ease, he sidled around the chimney and into the window in the space of a breath. Hildy watched another minute tick off on her wrist before heading back to the street and to the main doors of the building. 

By the time she reached the top of the steps, Walter was opening the door for her with a flourish. 

“Any sign of trouble?” she asked him as she slipped inside. 

“Not a bit, of course” Walter replied. “You know, one of these days we should tell our readers exactly how poor the security is at the city morgue. If the city can’t protect its dead, how can our good citizens ever have faith in the safety of the living!” 

“Page one,” Hildy said. She grabbed the crisp handkerchief from Walter’s pocket and bent down to wipe at the mud on her shoes. “Above the fold. _Morgue Marauders Molest Murdered!_ I’ll get started on it right after we finish desecrating the body we came for. Now, hurry up before the night man comes back from his break and turns us into pumpkins.”

If Hildy hadn’t put much thought to whether the theft of an old woman’s stomach would strain the limits of her conscience, she’d put even less consideration toward the impact on her life that being bolt-holed with Walter would cause. She couldn't honestly say she'd _never_ contemplated the possibility, but it wasn't a thought she allowed herself often. And the wait for toxicology results did not generally play a featured role.

If she’d had her say, they would have simply gone on their way and pretended all was well, but—

“The man murdered his own mother,” Walter insisted after delivering their ill-gotten evidence to a chemist he insisted could be trusted. 

“And what difference does that make to my going home to sleep the sleep of the righteous and just?” Hildy said, as he bundled her into the back seat of a taxi and directed the driver to take them to the Shoreland. No story had ever sent her into hiding before, and she didn't much like the idea of it.

“A desperate man who’s committed one murder already and thinks he has nothing to lose? Do you think he hasn’t figured his sister might have come to us? I couldn’t live with myself if you woke up murdered one morning because I failed to guard your safety.” 

“Don’t go treating me like I’m fragile,” Hildy snapped. “I’m a newspaperman just like you. Just like anyone in the city room, and don’t pretend to me that you’d—”

“I would and I have,” Walter said, lowering his voice and leaning in a bit, and Hildy could hear that irritating boasting tone that always came of him recounting his exploits like there were something that would shock her. “Why, just ask Duffy about Christmas of ‘28. He and I ate chipped beef and cheese for five days straight in an unplumbed cabin in the Appalachians while on the run from well-armed moonshiners.”

“The Shoreland sounds better than that, I'll give you,” Hildy grudgingly admitted, but she wanted to take it back just a few minutes later when they were standing in the hotel’s lobby and Walter smiled smoothly at the desk clerk, introduced himself as James Whittaker and requested a room for himself and his lovely wife. 

“Your virtue is in no danger,” Walter said, the most serious she’d ever heard him about anything, as he closed the door behind them and threw the bolt. “I may be a lout and a bastard--”

“Walter,” Hildy said, unpinning her hat and tossing it to the side, “I left my virtue in a hotel in Brooklyn five years ago.” 

It took seven tries to kiss the shocked look off his face, but she got there in the end

* * *

“Marry me,” Walter said, when Hildy emerged from the bathroom clad in nothing but a cloud of steam on the third night.

“You’re drunk.” Hildy said. 

“Sober as a judge my darling,” Walter said. “In fact, speaking of judges, I know one who owes me a favor.”

He rolled over on the bed and reached for the telephone. Hildy made no move to stop him. 

**Author's Note:**

> Obviously deeply sparked by Hildy's "Remember stealing old lady Haggerty's stomach from the coroner? We proved she'd been poisoned, didn't we? We had to hide out for a week. Do you remember that? The Shoreland Hotel. That's how we happened to..." line at the end of the movie, but also just my own deep desire to understand how these characters wound up where they did to begin with before we get to see them.
> 
> I chose Newark, New Jersey as the location for the Morning Post because honestly it's the closest I could come to making sense of the various geographical references throughout the movie.


End file.
